


Rook

by Ias



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Character Death Fix, F/F, Femslash, Fix-It, Power Dynamics, Rivals to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 23:11:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14389083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: "You may have the people’s hearts, but I have them by theballs. Do you want to guess which is a better leverage point?”There’s a cold glint in Nyreen’s eyes that Aria doesn’t like at all. “Those same people watched you flee Omega with your tail between your legs. They know you can be beaten now, Aria. You always said you were Omega’s queen, but really you were its god: untouchable, undefeatable, unquestionable.” Nyreen tilts her head. “What happens now that they know it isn’t true?”





	Rook

It’s too goddamn quiet. And for that matter, too goddamn clean. Even with broken glass littering the floor and the smoke of destroyed equipment turning the air hazy, there’s something about Afterlife that feels sterilized.

Within 12 hours Aria will be re-christening the club with the sort of party that will make Omega forget Cerberus, the Reapers, and the fact that anyone ever questioned Aria’s total supremacy on the station. For now, she sits in the chair by Petrovsky’s bookshelf, and toss his pretentious book collection out the broken window in front of her.

One by one, she hears the crack of their spines as they hit the floor below. It’s not quite as satisfying as the crack of Petrovksy’s neck breaking beneath her fingers, but she’ll take what she can get.

“You know, those are probably pretty valuable.”

Aria pauses, her hand inches from selecting the next book from Petrovsky’s shelf. When she turns her head she can see Nyreen standing in the shadows of the doorway, watching her. Her face hidden partially by her hood, and most of her weight on her left leg.

Aria picks up the next book and weighs it contemplatively in her hand. “I never took you for a fan of human literature, Nyreen.”

“I’m not. But paper books are rare enough. Those are almost certainly antiques.”

“I’m thinking of burning them.”  With a flick of her wrist Aria sends the book spinning out the window. Its pages flutter like the wings of a bird before it falls out of sight. “This shit is an insult to everything Omega is. Petrovsky thought he could come in here and drag us into the light of order and reason.”

“He didn’t understand what Omega is,” Nyreen agrees. Aria glances at her over her shoulder.  She’s stepped further into the room, but keeping to the perimeter. She moves with a slight limp. Aria distinctly remembers watching the Adjutant tearing through her leg, seconds before Shepard’s sniper fire took it out.  But it’s not her job to give a damn whether Nyreen takes care of herself or not.

Aware of Aria’s scrutiny, Nyreen reverts to a position that minimizes the effect of her injury. “Though he did understand enough to set up his base here—to try and borrow your authority,” Nyreen continues. With the toe of her boot, she nudges a shard of broken glass. It crumbles soundlessly. “It didn’t suit him.”

Aria leans over to grab another book from the shelf. She glances dismissively at the next cover before _The Great Gatsby_ follows its sisters to join the debris below. “If I didn’t know better, Nyreen, I’d say you’re glad to have me back.”

“Luckily, you do know better.” Nyreen turns away, her hands clasped behind her back. Her voice remains flat. “Obviously, I can’t keep my presence on Omega a secret any longer. You and I are going to have to find a way to coexist.”

“Because that always worked so well for us in the past,” Aria says drily. She turns in her chair to face Nyreen head-on. It’s nothing like the sprawling couch that used to serve as her throne; clearly Petrovsky didn’t know shit about  making an impression. “I don’t care what you do, Nyreen. As long as you stay out of my way.”

 Compared to other species, turians do not express much emotion through their facial features. But Aria has long since come to recognize the cold anger in her eyes. “I won’t make that promise. Not if you continue to put innocent lives at risk.”

Aria laughs, levering herself out of the chair so she can turn her back to Nyreen, staring through the broken windows to the workers clearing the floor below. “There are no innocent lives on Omega.”

“So that gave you the right to order Shepard to cut off their life support? People _died_ , Aria—”

“Spare me the lecture, Nyreen. You know damn well I didn’t have a choice.” From behind her, only silence. Aria is certain then that Nyreen has left without a word; the only time she could resist an ideological debate was when she physically removed herself from a room.

But when Aria stands to face what she thinks is an empty room, Nyreen is leaning against the back wall with her arms crossed over her chest. Watching. This time, Aria can’t read her at all. Which, after years of seeing right through her, is fucking disconcerting. It’s more silent in Afterlife than Aria has ever heard it.

It makes Aria want to try and cut her down to size. But the only thing she can think of to throw in Nyreen’s face at the moment is how quickly Nyreen had rushed to her aid as she ripped that force field open. No question, no hesitation. As if she actually gave a damn whether Aria took a bullet in the back. And when Aria had watched the Adjutants closing in around her, seen how _close_ it had been—

But Aria’s not about to pull the pin from that grenade, not before she’s sure where the shrapnel will hit. She doesn’t care if Nyreen cares. That had never been a requirement for either of them. But if there’s one thing Aria is certain of now, it’s that Nyreen wants her at least as much as she hates her.

“I didn’t expect to see you back here,” she says instead, her voice hitting that register Nyreen always loved. There’s more than one way to rechristen Afterlife, and Aria plans on working her way through them all. “No one comes to me unless they _want_ something.”

The silence stretches on, and the tension in the air grows tighter with it. They’re both tired, exhausted really, but the battle is still humming in Aria’s blood like the vibrations of Nyreen’s subvocals against her skin. It’s like the years apart never happened—or like they did, and this has been a long time coming. This is how it always was, with them.

Nyreen pushes off the wall, that effortless grace of a trained killer—Aria used to tell her she should try her hand at dancing. “What I want,” she says, her voice low, “is to save Omega from itself. I’m hoping you won’t make that also mean saving Omega from you.”   

And then instead of crossing the room to the one thing she and Aria had ever been good at together, she turns and walks out.

For a second Aria is left staring at the place where Nyreen had been standing, unable to believe she’s really left. Nyreen has always been predictable in every way. There was never a moment, over the course of their ill-fated relationship, when Aria hadn’t known what Nyreen would want, how she would feel, the exact actions she would take. The moment Nyreen decided she was leaving, Aria had broken it off between them before Nyreen had the chance to do it herself.

Today, for the first time in the course of their relationship, Nyreen had surprised her. Aria can’t really think of anything more fucking dangerous.

“Get the rest of this shit out of here,” she snarls, kicking Petrovsky’s ugly fucking chair over as Bray steps around the corner. “I want every whiff of Cerberus’s stink out of here before we open.” Through the windows overlooking the rest of the club, she can see Nyreen slipping out the front door. Not even a backwards glance.

Aria’s eyes flit to the chess set, just within arm’s reach. Her first instinct is to pick it up and send it to join the rest of Petrovsky’s book collection. But when she reaches out, her fingers close around one of the game pieces instead of flinging it in the direction of Nyreen’s retreating back. She won’t let this affect her. It means nothing. Nyreen can go fuck herself.

Aria turns away, her hands clasped behind her back. The chess set’s dark queen remains comfortably against her palm. Her face is once more a cold mask as she turns back to Bray.  

“And get some fucking music back on.”

 

* * *

 

 

Returning to Omega in blood and triumph doesn’t end up exactly like Aria thought it would.

Afterlife’s reopening is like a heart being shocked back to life, all thrashing movement and throbbing darkness. For a few days, it’s like Aria never left. But before long there are empty stools at the bar, and then more empty than full. Everyone is requesting a meeting with Aria these days, and hardly any of them are stopping to drink and ogle the dancers. The station is withdrawn. Casual back-alley murders are down, and if that’s not a sign of trouble on Omega then Aria isn’t sure what is.

“What the hell is happening around here,” Aria mutters as Bray steps into her audience chamber, her fingers drumming on the back of her new couch. It’s not quite the same as the one Petrovsky had chucked into the waterways, but it will do. “It’s like a goddamn ghost town in here.”  

Bray, as implacable as ever, shrugs. “The station is still being repaired. People are thinking more about food and power than tits and ryncol.”

“People are _always_ thinking about tits and ryncol,” Aria says. “Omega has weathered worse than this without losing its appetites before.”   

“Worse than the Reapers?” Bray says. “No one is really _from_ Omega. They’re watching their homes and families get blasted to smithereens every time they turn on a news vid.”

“Do you really think I’m likely to have forgotten that?” Aria snaps. News about Thessia had come in the night before. Not that she cared. She had no one and nothing there, or anywhere else—just how she liked it. But watching footage of the temple where she’d made her offerings as a child shattering like a dropped shot glass had been disconcerting. Maybe even temporarily disturbing.

She shakes herself out of the memory, turning to Bray with a glare. “Did you come in here just to make obvious statements?” 

“There’s a turian here to see you,” Bray says placidly.

“I don’t take unscheduled meetings.”

Bray’s face is utterly unreadable. It’s probably why Aria hasn’t had him killed yet. “She seemed to think you’d take this one.”

Hard to say which is more annoying—that Bray insists on pretending they don’t both know who it is waiting outside her antechamber, or that Bray knows damn well she’ll be taking the meeting either way. “Send her in,” Aria says with a dismissive wave of her hand that, had she been anyone else, would have fooled no one.

The guards step back and Nyreen enters, her dark hood pulled up to hide most of her face, moving with that slow, predatory gait equally suited for prowling through dark nightclubs and darker alleyways. Had she been so self-possessed when they were lovers? Doubtful. Aria would have noticed, and watched to make sure it didn’t develop into a threat.

“Nyreen,” she says as the dark-clad figure stops at the bottom of the dais. Aria reverts to the casual arrogance she uses with the 99% of the galaxy she considers inferior. Careful to give no indication of what had happened the last time she and Nyreen spoke. “You should know better than to show up without an invitation twice.”

That familiar chuckle from the depths of the cowl. “You let me in, didn’t you?”

“Call it a special allowance in honor of our recent victory. Don’t expect it again.” Aria settles back in the cushions of her couch and gestures at the space beside her. “Join me.”

Nyreen shifts, as if fighting the instinct to obey. For a split second Aria thinks Nyreen will actually be stupid enough to refuse. But then she steps up to the couch and lowers herself cautiously as far from Aria as can still be considered polite. Her posture is so stiff she could be a mech, but it’s clear that she’s trying to placate Aria’s ego. Which means, of course, that this time she really does want something.

“So.” Aria stares at the sliver of Nyreen’s face she can see beneath the hood, and then lets her eyes meander downward. Nyreen may be here to discuss business, but Aria has no intention of making it easy for her. “Drink?”

“Thank you, no.” Not trying _that_ hard, then. But the fact that Nyreen hasn’t barreled right into the topic means it’s something she can’t afford to mishandle. Her long legs are planted on the floor as if she’s ready to leap up at any moment, but that’s just Nyreen. Always on edge. Once upon a time there were a hundredfold things Aria would do to take that edge off; or maybe to hone it sharper.

“Business going well?” Nyreen says, either unaware of Aria’s train of thought or just pretending to be.

Aria stretches her arm across the back of the sofa and crosses her legs, staring idly through the glass to watch one of the dancers twirl. “I’m busy, Nyreen. If you want something just come out and say it.”

A moment of indecision, and then Nyreen sighs. With a slow, sweeping motion she pushes her hood back, and Aria can see her eyes. “Things are bad on Omega, Aria.”

Aria raises one apathetic shoulder. “They’re better than they were a week ago, I’d say.”

“Are they? The fighting with Cerberus took out infrastructure essential to the continued running of the station. There are still sections running on generator power and relying on water and food rations just to survive, and if any of those things fail—” She shook her head. “But you seem more interested in rebuilding your army than undoing the damage that Petrovsky did.”

“There’s a war on. I made a promise to our mutual friend that she’d have Omega’s military support.” And Commander Shepard was about the only person who could make that demand, and still have all her organs intact afterward.

“That doesn’t mean you can just abandon you civilian responsibilities.”  From the depths of her coat, Nyreen takes out a datapad.

Aria barks a laugh. “You brought _notes_?”

Nyreen ignores her. “There are three sectors in the lower sections relying on generators for power—if they run out of fuel or can’t keep them maintained, they’re going to suffocate. Not to mention station-wide food shortages, an eezo leak near the mines—”

“Honestly, Nyreen, all of this sounds much more like _your_ sort of problem. What’s the point of clawing your way to the top of a gang of vicious mercs and then reforming them into a bunch of do-gooders if you can’t actually do any good?”

Nyreen stares at her hard. “I lack the resources. You don’t.”

Aria sighs. Nyreen is nothing if not persistent. It just used to be a lot more _fun_. “I wonder if hiring a rival merc gang to take you out would finally shut you up.”

“You’re welcome to try.”

Aria chuckles without any real humor. “I miss the days when you spent most of your efforts to influence me in my bed.” Before Nyreen can respond, Aria picks up a datapad. “What do you need?”

“…Seriously?”

“Do not test my patience, Nyreen, I’m a split second from changing my mind.”

“One thousand ration packs,” Nyreen says instantly. “Ten new generators with enough fuel for three months. Fifty thousand credits to buy replacement power couplings. _And_ I want some of your security reassigned to help with the peacekeeping efforts.”

“My, you are demanding.” Aria punches some numbers into her datapad, followed by her authorization codes. “You get half. And my security stays with me—if you’re stupid enough to try and make Omega’s streets safer, you can waste your own soldiers’ time.”

Nyreen stares at her in utter disbelief. “You’re actually agreeing to help?”

Aria tosses the datapad to the span of cushions between them, her jaw tight. “Read it yourself, if you don’t believe me.”

Nyreen does. She takes a minute to scan the transfers Aria has just made before looking up again—not in a challenge, or condemnation, or any of the hundred items of visual weaponry Nyreen has aimed at her over the years. This is different. When she holds the datapad out to Aria again, there’s the hint of a smile in her voice. “I never thought I’d see the day when Aria T’loak willingly acted on behalf of the greater good.”

“I can still change my mind,” Aria snaps, wrenching the datapad out of Nyreen’s hand. “Now go skip off back to your den of integrity and tell the rest of your do-gooders not to fucking waste it.”

Nyreen stands there as if she has something to say, something worth risking Aria’s wrath for—but no, she’s turning away. Good. Aria has more important business to attend to than offering handouts to bleeding-heart merc leaders. She’s just about to go back to gloating over reports of Cerberus retreating when Nyeen pauses, half turned away, to look back over her shoulder.

“I won’t waste it, Aria.”

And then she really is gone.

For a minute Aria stares straight ahead, her expression dark. Why the fuck did she do that? Nyreen had nothing on her, no leverage or bribes; just her stupid platitudes and constant yammering about morality that Aria had been laughing at for years.

“Dal Kramot is here to see you,” Bray said placidly.

Aria glares into his carefully expressionless face. “Tell him to go fuck himself. I’m done with meetings for today.”

Bray wisely makes no comment. It’s why he’s survived this long.

 

* * *

 

 

It starts slowly at first. Mercs with Talons gear guarding the supply depots, killing anyone with the shrewd business sense to try taking the civilian supplies for their own. Then, Talons patrolling the streets, breaking up muggings, chasing off looters. Reports trickle into Afterlife of small-time gang leaders disappearing; shortly afterward, the Talons have even more bodies patrolling the streets. The people aren’t scared of them. They nod as the Talons pass.

It’s only when the stylized _T_ of the Talons on their breastplate is replaced by a simple Ω that Aria decides it’s time to pay a visit.

The Talons’ new base is technically a secret, but nothing on Omega can be hidden from Aria for long. She goes there alone; if she needed guards she would already be too weak to keep Omega under her fist. As always, there’s plenty who’d like to mount her head on a spike outside Afterlife for all to see, but after defeating Petrovsky almost singlehandedly, those people are thinking twice.

The front entrance is guarded by a trio, two turians and a human all in armor. Aria strides up to the door without sparing them a glance, only stopping when it refuses to open in front of her. “I’m here for Nyreen,” Aria says, keeping her gaze to the closed door as if the guards are beneath her notice.

The human to her right shifts nervously. “Uh, this is a restricted perimeter.”

Only then does she turn to cast a withering glance on the guard, who holds his weapon as if he knows how to use it but is vacillating on whether he wants to. “Are you forgetting whose station you’re standing on?” she snaps.

“It’s alright,” one of the turians says, before the human can say whatever potentially violence-inducing retort is on the tip of his tongue. “Nyreen is expecting you,” he says to Aria, and pushes the door open for her.

Aria steps inside. The base is in what used to be the lobby of as close as you can find to an upscale apartment complex on Omega; it shut down after the owner decided the Blue Suns' protection fee wasn't as high as the cost of some well-armed mercs to protect his investment. He paid with his life, as was only right. Defying the Blue Suns would have set a complicated precedent. Aria controlled the gangs; by definition, anyone who defied the gangs defied her as well. The irony of Nyreen setting up shop here now was not lost on Aria either. 

Today, the lobby is bustling again; but not with new-money tycoons and second-sons of rich estates, hoping to make it good in the shadows after being pushed out of the light. Now it's people of every species, each more ragged looking than the last; there are a number of lines throughout the room. It doesn't take a great leap of logic to understand they're being handed out supplies. Instead of mercs cleaning their guns or practicing combat movies, Nyreen’s base is full of refugees.

Two of the guards fall into step just behind her. "This way, please," the turian says, and guides her towards the staircase. Aria curbs the sneer threatening to twist her mouth, and lets them think they have her contained. She's here for Nyreen. No one and nothing else matters.

Up the stairs and down a hallway, past the remains of an old restaurant (an ops center, now) and the grand ballroom--the chandelier is still there, though only its picked-over skeleton. The room is being used as temporary hospital, littered with blankets and cots and miserable looking people in rows.

The guards lead her further down the hall, past many more closed doors and piles of supplies. Eventually they stop before an unassuming door, and knock three times. A familiar voice says "Enter," and Aria pushes through it without waiting for the guards to stand on ceremony.

Nyreen stands in what appears to have been a cramped hotel room, converted into a modest office. The word _modest_ alone practically makes Aria's skin crawl. There's no ceremony, no pomp; Nyreen herself stands before an ordinary desk, one of its legs propped up with a used thermal clip so that it stays level. It’s dark at the edges, lit by a single light. There are two empty chairs on Aria's side, and a heap of paperwork between them. With a twitch of her neck, Aria’s biotics slams the door closed behind her before the guards can follow her in.

Nyreen looks up at the sound, unalarmed. She isn't even wearing armor; just simple, practical clothes, and a wrap around her chest and shoulders. With a sigh, she raises her hand to her ear. "It's alright, Lir. You can leave us."

In lieu of capitulating to the chairs, Aria ignores Nyreen entirely. Instead she wanders around the room, whose walls are posted with maps of Omega; no sensitive information, obviously, if this is where Nyreen meets with her supplicants—or whatever more diplomatic term she calls them. There are numbers about food, air, energy quotas. The whole thing makes Aria _sick_.

"I figured you'd come to see me." Nyreen stands behind her desk, both hands braced on it as they were when Aria came in. She doesn't even look up from whatever paperwork she's scrutinizing. "What are you going to reprimand me about first?"

Aria tugs a leaflet about sewage lines from where it’s posted on the wall, stares at it blankly, and then tosses it aside. "I would have taken the ballroom, myself," she says. "Or maybe the penthouse. If you insist on taking the office of an overworked ship insurance salesman no one will ever see you as more."

"Maybe I’m not interested in how people see me." At last Nyreen straightens, and Aria turns to face her. She's on the other side of the room, and the only light comes from above the desk; she stands in shadow, and Nyreen in the light. It paints the sharp planes and grooves of her face smooth, and makes the hollows of her eyes into a skull-like mask.

Nyreen doesn't speak, at first. She's clearly thrown by Aria's silence, uncharacteristic as it is—intentionally so. Aria is _capable_ of being quiet, when she wants to be. It's just that she so very rarely wants to be. But now, staring at Nyreen from this impossible distance away, she can afford to wait for her quiet disgust to find words.  

"I suppose this is about the Guardians," Nyreen says at last.

Aria laughs. She can even hear the capital _g_ in Nyreen's voice. "Is that really what you're calling them?"

"I doubt my naming conventions is what you're upset about."

"Upset? Oh, Nyreen." At last Aria saunters over, ignoring the two chairs in order to sit on the edge of the desk, still not quite level with Nyreen's superior height. Her smile doesn't waver—Nyreen doesn't take a step back, but she looks like she has to repress the urge. "I am _furious_."

"You have no right to be."

"No _right_?" Aria slams her fist down on the desk between them, making the stacks of paperwork shift dangerously. "You’re creating a goddamn police force outside my jurisdiction, using the resources I gave you in good will against me. I'd almost be impressed, if I wasn't so unbelievably pissed."

Nyreen crosses her arms over her chest. "I fail to see how taking the guns and weapons you granted me and using them to arm my troops is some kind of betrayal, Aria."

"Don't play coy with me. You're not just trying to build up your merc gang. This is _authority_ you're flirting with.” Aria stabs a finger in the direction of the door. “That's a goddamn refugee line you have going in that hotel lobby. You can’t try to tell me that's not political."

"Not everything has to be."

"Oh, so you're just trying to do what's right."

"You say that as if it's so insane."

"Do you even know where you're standing?" Aria leans forward across the desk. "This is _Omega_. The diseased asshole of the entire galaxy. And Omega does not need whatever cure you're trying to offer it."

Nyreen reaches down to straighten the paper that Aria's movements had begun to displace. "Easy for you to say, when you're the one who benefits from Omega staying the same."

Aria laughs, turning her head to stare into the dark corners of the room. "You are so naive. How do you think this is going to end? You set up some kind of lawkeeping body in the most lawless place in the world, and hope that the merc gangs will tolerate it? That _I_ will tolerate it?"

She can feel Nyreen's eyes on her. "You can't stop this, Aria."

Aria just laughs. There's nothing she can say to such a ridiculous statement--she could crush Nyreen's entire organization in a night, if she felt like it--but Nyreen continues all the same. “The people have seen us help them. They know how things can be different. If you wipe us out, do you plan on continuing our relief efforts? What will the people do when they find out the great Aria T’Loak wiped out the only ones on Omega interested in helping anyone but themselves?”

The fury spikes in Aria's blood like a match to a flame. In an instant she's off the desk and rounding on Nyreen, a finger jabbing into the center of her chest. “You may have the people’s hearts, but I have them by the _balls_. Do you want to guess which is a better leverage point?”

There’s a cold glint in Nyreen’s eyes that Aria doesn’t like at all. “Those same people watched you flee Omega with your tail between your legs. They know you can be beaten now, Aria. You always said you were Omega’s queen, but really you were its god: untouchable, undefeatable, _unquestionable.”_ Nyreen tilts her head. “What happens now that they know it isn’t true?”

Nyreen is flying backwards across the room before Aria is even aware of activating her biotics, slammed against the wall five feet behind her and pinned by a biotic field. It disappears in a second, dropping Nyreen to her feet—but Aria is already storming towards her, her fists surrounded by a purple nimbus as she closes the distance between them.

“ _I_ ousted Cerberus!” Nyreen ducks under her first swing, and a chunk of the wall behind where her head was a split second ago is no longer there. “ _I_ took back what was mine!” Her next blow Nyreen catches, faster than Aria can believe even through the violet haze of fury clouding her eyes. Nyreen’s fingers dig into her wrist, but not before Aria’s other hand darts out to close around her neck, slamming Nyreen back against the wall with physical force alone. The grip on Aria’s hand tightens—Nyreen could break her wrist by squeezing, Aria is well acquainted with her strength—then stops. Just as Aria keeps her hand pressed to Nyreen’s throat without pressing down hard enough to stop her breath.

“But you didn’t do it alone,” Nyreen says in the miniscule space between them. Aria breathes hard, dragging in Nyreen’s scent with each inhale, whether she wants to or not. The look on Nyreen’s face is familiar now. It’s a challenge. “And you didn’t take it _all_ back, did you Aria?” 

Aria tightens her hand around Nyreen’s throat at the exact moment she presses forward and slides her knee in between Nyreen’s legs. It’s an old move. One she’s used dozens of times. But the way she can feel Nyreen’s body tremor beneath her, _feel_ the breath catch in her throat beneath her palm—

“I’m going to rectify that now,” Aria snarls, and then Nyreen lunges forward to put their mouths to better use than talking.

 

* * *

 

Afterward, when Nyreen’s paperwork has been scattered to every corner of the room and the heat sink propped under the corner of the desk has long been jarred loose, Aria finishes straightening her clothes as Nyreen stays perched on the edge of the desk, mostly undressed and utterly debauched. That’s new. Nyreen never used to seem comfortable with nudity before. Now she rolls her shoulders with a satisfied hum, the muscles on her unarmored waist shifting.

Aria stares. Of course she stares. She doesn’t surround herself with beautiful dancers because she is unable to appreciate a body’s physical form.

“We done here?” Nyreen’s voice is so casual it’s almost a drawl. She hasn’t missed the focus of Aria’s gaze. “Or are you still working it out of your system?”

“The _love ‘em and leave ‘em_ routine doesn’t suit you, Nyreen.” Aria’s voice is cold as she turns away. Her left boot remains unaccounted for.

Nyreen leans back, propped up on her hands, and her mandibles flick with amusement. Aria wants to cross the room and do things that will make her clothing slightly less than pristine once more. Instead, she leans down to peer under a fallen chair. “You always played it so well. You can hardly blame me for trying to emulate you.”

“Emulate me?” The disbelief in Aria’s voice overpowers the amusement, but only slightly. She straightens up to fix Nyreen with a shrewd stare. “Is that what all this is about? Trying to—what? Beat me at my own game?”

There’s no lazy amusement in Nyreen’s eyes now. She sits straighter; her eyes scan the room for her clothes. “You know that’s not why I’m doing this.”

Aria laughs. “Sweetheart, I don’t have the faintest idea why you’re doing _any_ of this. And frankly, I don’t care.” Beneath the crumpled papers covering the floor, Aria’s bare foot nudges her missing boot. She pulls it on without hesitation, and turns to the door. Out of the corner of her eye, Nyreen sits hunched on the desk, her fingers gripping its edge too tight. Aria makes a point not to look at her directly as she steps past.

“You have twenty-four hours to disband your little private militia,” she says. “Otherwise, I’m coming back for everything you have.”

With a flick of her wrist, purple energy swallows the door. A second later it tears off its hinges and slamming into the opposite side of the hallway. Aria steps over the threshold, ignoring the raised guns of the five guards waiting outside. Whatever Nyreen says into their private comms doesn’t make them lower their guns, but neither do they shoot her as she steps past without once looking at them. This is a victory. This should feel like a victory.

She can still smell Nyreen, on her skin beneath her clothes. Quickening her pace to the lobby, Aria resolves to take a scalding hot shower the second she’s back to her own quarters. But for now, she breathes deep. 

 

* * *

 

 

Twenty four hours pass. There is no sun to rise on Omega; the new day never dawns. It’s always night here. And when one day rolls without fanfare into another, there is only one notable thing about it: the Talons’ forces still stand on their street corners. The refugees still go to them for help. The time has come for Aria to make good on her promise, and send her loyal followers to teach the Talons that no one fucks with Aria T’Loak.

She doesn’t give the order.

The day turns into a week. No one knows about the promise she made Nyreen, and that’s the one reason can even consider holding back. If her reputation was at stake, if it was a question of looking _weak_ —well. There are some things that cannot be borne.

The question, then, of _why_ Aria is holding back, is one she can’t fully answer. Aria controls the gangs, the gangs control crime, and crime controls Omega. Everything in equilibrium, with Aria at the center. But Nyreen—Nyreen is incorruptible. A force that Aria can destroy, but never manipulate.

Well. People on Omega aren’t dying as much as they would be otherwise. That’s probably a plus in Nyreen’s book, but Aria has never really cared one way or another. People _die_. In fact, given recent events, many, _many_ people are dying at any given moment. That’s the one thing every species has in common. It only becomes annoying when the _wrong_ people are dying, or the right people are refusing to. That’s Aria’s jurisdiction; it’s what she understands. Killing one person for the sake of her own interests should be easy.

The fact that she’s questioning whether that’s true anymore makes Aria wonder what the fuck she’s even good for anymore.

Late at night, Aria sits awake while Kaela, one of Afterlife’s best dancers, tries and fails to distract her. She stares in the direction of the vid screen instead, the side of her fist pressed gently to her mouth as she lets the images wash over her.

The monitor shows broadcasts from nearby systems. Muted, the images speak for themselves. Colossal figures falling from the sky, spouting columns of fire. Entire planets wiped out. To the soundtrack of Kaela’s dance music, it looks like something from a bad vid. Her fingers run over the contours of the chess piece, worrying it like water over rock. She been meaning to throw it away. Somehow, it keeps slipping her mind.

Aria doesn’t  get scared. But she also hadn’t really ever met something worth being scared of.

From the doorway, a quiet cough. “I have the reports, Aria.”

She gestures Bray inside without turning from the screen. “That’s enough, Kaela. You can go.”

As the dancer leaves, Aria turns off the music and the television with a gesture, plunging the room into silence and dark. There’s just the dim red lights, and the windows that look out on Omega’s cityscape. Bray slides the datapad onto the table in front of her and then just stands, staring in the same direction as Aria’s gaze: to the blank screen where the Reaper footage had been playing, now nothing but a dark plain.

“Anything you want to talk about?” It’s as close to commenting on Aria’s state of mind as Bray is likely to get. He’s only asked it a couple times before; once on her flagship after Cerberus ousted her, and once when Nyreen left. She’d told him to fuck off both of those times. But now, her fist just tightens against her lips as she looks up at him.

“Do you have a family?”

Bray blinks all sets of his eyes. “What?”

“A family,” Aria repeats sharply. “Kids. A partner. An elderly mother. I don’t fucking know.”

Bray stares at her as if she’s just told him to trade in his gun for a confetti canon. “A sister,” he says at last. “Back on Khar’shan. She made it out before the Reapers took over.”

Aria stares straight ahead, her fingers worrying at the chess piece. “Get out,” she says at last, her voice as cold as the vacuum. Bray leaves without another word.

Nyreen was right. She _wasn’t_ invulnerable. And if the Reapers came for Omega, there wasn’t one goddamn thing Aria T’Loak would be able to do to stop them.

She slips out of her room a few moments later, passing Bray at his post in the hallway. With a curt gesture she stops him from following her. Whether he approves of her solitary prowls or not he has never bothered (or dared) to comment.

It’s a familiar route, though not one she’s taken in a while. All back alleys and skulking on shadows, though on a station comprised of equal parts of both, that’s not saying much. The stairs grow more narrow as they wind down. Somehow, she’s always felt like she’s actually going up; as if the spike driven into the asteroid that forms Omega’s hollowed-out heart is actually a tower climbing into space.

This particular building is abandoned; the only thing notable about it is the uncharacteristic lack of vorcha. At the highest (lowest) point, the stairs end in an empty room of windows. All around there’s nothing but the blackness of the void, a perfect circle of unbroken glass. In the center of the room is a dull pyramid of empty ryncol bottles, most so old the labels are illegible beneath the dust. A few new ones, though. All of them Aria’s.

She’s never had much tolerance for this kind of self-indulgent moping. But there have been times, over the past few years, when she hasn’t been able to start sleeping or stop thinking. She could buy company or solitude at any price, but it had never quite felt the same as the silence down here, where only Bray could find her.

She sits down on the floor, cracks open the bottle, and starts to drink.

 

* * *

 

When Nyreen finds her, the bottle is a lot emptier than it was when Aria started.

Aria hears her on the steps. Propped up on her elbows, every extremity tingling, she doesn’t bother to turn around. Instead she keeps staring blearily at the same stars that have kept her company as she worked her way down the bottle. They look less like dots and more like smears, now. The footsteps stop a short distance behind her.

“You’re late,” Aria says. Very careful not to slur any of her words.

“Actually, you’re late,” Nyreen replies after a moment. “By about two years.” 

They’d met here often, back then. After the worst of their arguments, they would meet with a bottle of ryncol and mutually refuse to apologize. This place was a shelter; or maybe a decon chamber. Nothing from the outside could survive here. A place where there was nothing but them. Nyreen’s idea, of course. Aria would hardly have thought of something so spectacularly cheesy herself, let alone implemented it.

But it was a good place to fuck, so she hadn’t really complained. And she’d come back here, from time to time, on the rare occasion she needed space to think. It occurred to her that she had never sought out peace and quiet before Nyreen came into her life. It also occurred to her that over the past two years working on Omega in secret, Nyreen had probably been well aware Aria had returned to their old hideout to drink alone.

A bottle clinks onto the floor beside her own. She looks up into Nyreen’s face, who looks away too quickly. “I couldn’t remember whose turn it was to bring the booze.”

“Who gives a damn,” Aria says. “As long as its strong.”

Nyreen settles down next to her, the bottles in between them. Her posture is rigid, legs folded and hands on her knees, back ram-rod straight. The position she used for her meditation, every morning without fail. Aria would prop herself on her elbow in bed and mock Nyreen’s resolve, and Nyreen would pretend she was too deep in her meditation to hear. Aria had never bothered to ask whether she picked it up from the Cabal, or from her family, or from somewhere else among all those stars. She wasn’t about to ask such a stupidly sentimental question now.

Aria’s fingers tighten on the chess piece in her other palm. Consciously, she forces them to relax. “Omega needs order like a varren needs a Carnifax.”

For a second Aria thinks Nyreen won’t respond. But then she reaches across Aria’s body to pull the bottle from her unresisting fingers. “I thought we weren’t supposed to fight when we came here.”

“That was back when we were—whatever we were.”

Nyreen takes a long drink, watching Aria out of the corner of her eye. When she sets the bottle between them again, its clink on the floor is hollow. “If it’s so pointless,” Nyreen says “why didn’t you kill me?”

Aria frowns at her. “I came here hoping you could tell me that.” She must be drunker than she thought, to let herself say these things. But Nyreen doesn’t seem to care.

“I’m not going to try to explain your own feelings to you. A good start, though, might be for you to _acknowledge_ you have feelings in the first place.”

Aria shrugs. “Sounds inconvenient.”

“You can joke. But I see it. I’ve always seen it.” In full spirits, Aria would have mocked Nyreen ruthlessly for that kind of optimism. As it is, all she does is reach down to crack open Nyreen’s bottle of ryncol.

“The war is changing things, Aria.” Nyreen’s voice is soft in the starry darkness between them. “ _Omega_ is changing. You can either try to stop that, or try to change with it.”

Aria’s tongue is too numb to taste the alcohol, but she swallows what she can.  “Change has never been my strong suit.”

Nyreen accepts the bottle from her hand, carefully not to brush her fingers. “I’m well aware. I’m not sure which of us tried harder to warp the other to our purposes. You were just better at it than I ever was.”

“Was I? You strike me as just as naïve and self-sacrificing as the day you first stepped into Afterlife.” Aria smirks. “You were so naïve, so _self-righteous._ I wanted to break you of that, to drag you down to my level just to see if I could.”

“Looks like that backfired a bit.” Nyreen tilts her head back as she drinks, and for a moment Aria stares at the curve of her throat, bobbing with each swallow. “You made me less naïve, but no less self-righteous.”

Aria snorts.  

“I tried to change you too, of course,” Nyreen says after a moment. “I thought I could—I don’t know. Redeem you. I figured that anyone that cynical must have a heart of gold buried somewhere deep down. You can laugh,” she says over Aria’s chortles. “But I think I made my mark, all the same.

“And how,” Aria says, struggling to fight the smirk off her features, “ _exactly_ do you think you influenced me?”

“Because you said you were going to kill me a week ago, and here we are.”

Aria has nothing to say to that. Can’t even be bothered to deny it. This time when Nyreen passes the bottle back their fingers trail together, only for a moment. If Aria’s body was numb before, that brush of contact ignites her.

Aria doesn’t notice the chess piece has fallen from her fingers until she sees Nyreen turning it over in her long, gloved fingers. The queen reflects the light of the stars, and the darkness of the space in between.

“People used to think this place would last forever,” Nyreen says. “Anyone who couldn’t make it out ended up dying here before long; in comparison, Omega itself seemed indestructible.” Her mandibles twitch. “Like you. But now every time people turn on the news vids, they remember that any day might be Omega’s last. And that does something to people. It makes them remember that, right now, they’re alive. And as long as that’s true, anything could happen.”  

Aria leans over to kiss her then, quick and clumsy with alcohol and inexperience, because in all the years they’ve known each other she’s never kissed Nyreen like this. She was still beneath Aria’s ministrations, as she dragged her lips across Nyreen’s mouth, slow and gentle and persistent in ways she never would have let herself be without copious amounts of alcohol and the approaching end of everything. “Come back to Afterlife,” she whispers, her fingers reaching up to follow the red familial markings that bisect Nyreen’s face. “We’re so fucking good together, Nyreen. We could make Omega whatever we wanted it to be.”

Nyreen’s hand comes up to cup her jaw—and then, gently pulls her away. “What I want for Omega is very different from what you want, Aria. I’m not interested in declaring myself queen, and I’m certainly not interested in ruling it by your side; and if you think for three seconds when you’re not very drunk, I think you’ll agree about what a terrible idea that would be. All I want for Omega is to help its people.”

Aria pushes forward to press a kiss to the side of Nyreen’s mandible. “You helping people,” she says, chasing Nyreen’s mouth even as she pulls away with a hum of pleasure, “is really fucking inconvenient.”

“Maybe I just enjoy being a thorn in your side.” Nyreen does kiss her then, her hands gripping Aria’s biceps and pulling their bodies flush. “You better get used to the idea of a force on Omega that’s beyond your control.” 

Aria pulls back with a ragged sigh, equal parts aggravation and desire. “It’s always going to be a power struggle between us,” she says. Her fingers dig into the lapel of Nyreen’s coat, but does not pull her closer. Only holds her in place, her grip hard. “But I hope you know I’m going to win.”  

“Keep telling yourself that,” Nyreen says drily, and two seconds Aria fumbles across the distance between them to climb into Nyreen’s lap, who in between tearing Aria’s clothes off, rolls over on top of her. At some point their flailing limbs knock against the pyramid of empty bottles, and they tumble down and roll into the dark corners of the room.

Aria’s last coherent thought is that she should have those chucked out an airlock. It’s kind of depressing, really, to have them lying around, all those nights spent drinking alone—and then Nyreen gets the buckle of her pants open, and the thought of being alone is the farthest thing from her mind.  

 

* * *

 

Aria sends the chess set to Shepard the next day. It’s the next best thing to sending his decapitated head in a cryo-case, and she figures Shepard might not appreciate the mess.

She keeps the queen, though. Shepard is too busy defending the galaxy to play some stupid game. It sits in her jacket pocket, smooth and solid when she runs a finger over its edges. It’s a trophy of her victory. It’s not _sentimental_. There’s one only person on Omega with the balls to say otherwise; and when Nyreen finds it in Aria’s jacket after one of their many “meetings”, all she does is slip it back into the pocket with a smile she thinks Aria doesn’t see.

 


End file.
